Dostoyevsky and Plato: The Power of Storytelling

Spoiler warning for Crime and Punishment

Story is a powerful tool in the dissemination of ideas, and few understood this principle better than the Greeks. In Classical Greece, traveling poets called rhapsodes dedicated their lives to memorizing the works of the poet Homer, the Iliad, and the Odyssey. Lines from both of these epic poems were also readily available to most Greeks from merchants on the street to lofty academics. The Greeks understood that by encapsulating their ideas within the context of a story, they brought those ideas to life and enabled people to empathize with them on a more personal level. Perhaps the best Greek thinker to understand this was Plato, who organized many of his philosophical works as dialogues, coming from the Greek roots “duo” (δύο) meaning two, and “logos” (λόγος) meaning thought or principle. A Platonic dialogue sets two opposing ideas against one another by pitting two characters against one another. Socrates is often the protagonist of these dialogues, arguing in favor of the beliefs that many scholars believe were Plato’s. Plato chose Socrates for this role because he had a reputation among Athenian philosophers for being truthful and straightforward. Plato also wrote a bevy of antagonists who challenged Socrates and Plato’s views. Among these antagonists, the sophist Gorgias stands out as one of the most famous, advocating that rhetoric should be prioritized over truth as the ultimate goal.

One might rightfully ask, “why would Plato go through the trouble of writing antagonists whose main goal is to unravel Plato’s ideas? Would it not be more effective to write more defenses of one’s own arguments instead?” Contrary to being perceived as a weakness, this strategy is one of the main reasons why Plato's dialogues continue to be widely read and enjoyed today. Plato does not simply create strawmen to attack, loading his antagonists with weak arguments and celebrating his victory over them. Instead, he subjects his thoughts to a great crucible of ideas to sort out the wheat from the chaff, as it were. In doing this, Plato puts his ideas under the stress of an intelligent and motivated opponent. The heat of this method forges Plato’s arguments into a stronger and more defensible version of what might have been written had Plato merely written treatises or essays on the various issues he dealt with. It also allowed everyday Athenians to digest and empathize with his works in a way that gave his ideas much more influence on society.

2,200 miles north and 2,300 years after Plato wrote his dialogues, another thinker interested in understanding human nature began writing novels: Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky’s novels are all incredible reads, and they employ a bevy of different stylistic and philosophical tools to make the writing more effective at conveying Dostoevsky’s underlying ethical philosophy. In his book on Dostoyevsky, The Sinner and the Saint, Kevin Birmingham writes that Dostoyevsky’s works were the first polyphonic novels to attract a large readership. This means that Dostoyevsky’s novels offer a wide range of positions on various issues, and the reader is trusted with discerning which position is the most veracious.

Whereas Plato casts a strong and virtuous protagonist to spout his ideas, Dostoyevsky often makes those with whom he most disagrees his protagonists. The best example of this is the character of Raskolnikov from his 1866 novel Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov is a poor law student and a utilitarian rationalist who justifies the murder of an old pawnbroker as being the morally upright thing to do. As we follow our protagonist around the dingy and labyrinthine streets of 19th-century St. Petersburg, we get to see him interact with others who represent various philosophical perspectives. We meet Luzhin, a rich businessman and a suitor to Raskolnikov’s sister Avdotya, who represents that upper-class materialist utilitarianism that makes Raskolnikov wince but which also reflects back a bit of himself. Razumikhin is a poor student and a charming raconteur who often acts as the voice of reason for Raskolnikov (razum meaning reason in Russian). Finally, Svidrigailov is an enigmatic benefactor with amorous designs on Avdotya and a shady past. He represents that which Raskolnikov purports to want to be: the “ubermensch” or the extraordinary man who does what he can while those around him suffer what they must. These characters and many more all come to life in vivid color through Dostoyevsky’s arresting prose, and the effect of their collective escapades creates an interesting commentary on poverty, morality, guilt, and madness. Raskolnikov is ultimately made to come to terms with reality; he cannot continue living with the guilt he bears for murdering two innocent women and must confess to his crimes. All of the rational thought in the world about how killing the pawnbroker is a moral act goes out the window the second the axe comes crashing down on her head. It is at that moment that crime turns to punishment.

The novel is effective at conveying the underlying meaning of Dostoyevsky’s philosophy because it turns Plato’s style on its head. Instead of the protagonist aligning with the author's beliefs, the opposite occurs, leaving us to follow a protagonist whom the author vigorously disagrees with. This structure is counterintuitive but is nonetheless effective because it forces the reader to empathize with the protagonist and to experience the pitfalls of his ethical philosophy from a first-person perspective. In this way, Dostoyevsky is able to embed his philosophy in a medium that is more broadly understandable. Anyone can pick up Crime and Punishment and learn a lesson about human nature, that is not the case for dusty, verbose academic works like Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals or Aquinas’ Summa Theologica. Those works are prescriptive in nature and seek to understand ethics as a philosophical theory; Dostoyevsky forces readers to see every possible utility and malady of the philosophical theories being examined by his novels, an emulation of a Greek storytelling device 2,500 years in the making.

“Those who tell the stories rule society.” - Plato

Debunking the Lost Cause Myth: Slavery was the Chief Cause of the American Civil War

Historical revisionism is on the rise in the United States. Many people no longer view history as a purely academic field, dedicated to uncovering the mysteries of the past. Instead, a litany of modern historians try to spin history to suit their personal agendas, and this tactic works exceedingly well for them, to paraphrase George Orwell “he who controls the past controls the future.” Some, like the right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, deny the veracity of major world events like the moon landing and the Holocaust, while others like Nikole Hannah-Jones and her 1619 Project attempt to paint the American Revolution and the founding of the United States as having been merely tools for the preservation and expansion of slavery. No historical revision has been quite so successful as the so-called “lost cause” myth, which posits that the American Civil War was not fought primarily over the issue of slavery, but rather for state’s rights and southern heritage. This myth is so prevalent that a full 41% of Americans deny that slavery was the central cause of the war, according to The Washington Post. These numbers are staggering considering the popularity of other revisionist interpretations of history, for example, the aforementioned 1619 Project got severe blowback from academics writing for liberal publications like The Washington Post and Politico, to say nothing of convincing nearly half of the U.S. population of its claims.

It should be said that I am a proud son of the state of North Carolina, having lived here for my entire life, and that I love living in the South. Many who view the Civil War as having been primarily fought over state’s rights or tariffs feel as though their love of hearth and home is under assault from those who argue that the Civil War was fought over slavery: this is not the case insofar as this article is concerned. Historical accuracy is of paramount importance, and so I will explicate the relevant historical texts as well as the writings of Confederate soldiers, generals, and politicians in order to see what the Confederates themselves believed their cause to be.

What is the Lost Cause Myth?

When the guns fell silent following the surrender signed at Appomattox Courthouse in mid-1865, the northern United States felt a sense of bittersweet jubilation in their victory over the South. The North had lost a great many men to disease and injury on the battlefield, but they preserved the Union and also struck great blows for liberty on the political, military, and moral fronts. The South, on the other hand, had been humiliated, defeated, and had many of her largest cities laid low and burned to the ground. The era of reconstruction had begun, and white southerners had to adjust to a new status quo in which men who had once been owned were free, could serve in offices of public trust, and eventually vote. Some Southerners adapted to the changing times and embraced reconstruction. Men like James Longstreet, a Confederate general and the best man at U.S. Grant’s wedding before the war, exemplified this sort of southerner, dubbed by bitter opponents as a “scalawag.” Longstreet and his ilk openly embraced reconstruction and the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery except as a punishment for a crime. While the news of Southerners embracing reconstruction and emancipation was certainly a positive development, it by no means constituted a majority of Southerners’ opinions about reconstruction and especially about emancipation.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy were responsible for the erection of hundreds of Confederate monuments and memorials in the early 20th Century.

The South felt dejected, and the immense casualties they suffered during the war seemed pointless. Many in the South felt put upon and villainized, and so they sought a new history that would reframe much of the history of the antebellum period and of the war itself, and they found just that with the 1867 publication of Edward A. Pollard’s book The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates. The text established many of the central tropes of the lost cause myth: that the war was not caused by slavery, that African slavery had been a noble and gentle institution in which slaves were happy and treated well, and that the Confederates had only been defeated by the overwhelming numbers of Union manpower, inter alia. The idea that American slavery was a kind or noble institution is ridiculous on its face, and beyond films like Gone with the Wind, it is rare to see full-throated defenses of that claim and so this essay will not attempt to debunk it further than it has already been. Additionally, the claim that the Union was only successful in the war due to overwhelming manpower is one best left to a military historian, the YouTube channel Atun-Shei Films has an excellent series called Checkmate Lincolnites which delves into immense detail about the campaigns of 1861–65 and so for more information in that vein, visit his channel. The lost cause interpretation is a myth because it argues that slavery was not the primary cause of the American Civil War, a falsehood that the remainder of this essay will attempt to deconstruct.

Slavery in the Constitution

When the United States was founded in 1776, it floundered for a number of years under the weak and ineffectual Articles of Confederation, which formed a loose union of states that a citizen of today’s mighty federal republic would hardly recognize. The Articles of Confederation was no model for a functioning government: it could not raise revenue from the states through taxes, instead it was merely allowed to request funds to be raised voluntarily, the Articles also failed at the central function of government, protecting the people, during Shays Rebellion. Following America’s miraculous victory in the revolutionary war, a new structure for the federal government was immediately the topic du jour. Federalists, pointing out the weaknesses inherent in the Articles of Confederation, argued for a strong federal government and a tighter union between the states while Anti-Federalists argued for the opposite, a weaker central government, and a greater focus on autonomy for each state to pursue its own destiny.

The Constitutional Convention of 1787 dealt with many fundamental issues, perhaps the principle among them was slavery.

The issue which was the most vitriolic, however, was slavery. Southern states had a clear economic incentive to continue the practice, while northern states had been slowly abolishing the institution over many years. The nation may not have endured an intense fight over slavery this early in its history, as the Gilder Lehrman Institute puts it, “The framers of the Constitution believed that concessions on slavery were the price for the support of southern delegates for a strong central government. They were convinced that if the Constitution restricted the slave trade, South Carolina and Georgia would refuse to join the Union.” When reading the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, produced during this tumultuous period of American history, the conflict between these two diametrically opposed camps is palpable. The word “slave” did not appear even once in the Constitution until the passage of the 13th Amendment which abolished African slavery. Instead, slavery is simply alluded to a number of times, and the institution is heavily regulated by the Constitution of 1787. The 3/5ths compromise allowed the southern states to count 3/5ths of the population of enslaved people when counting for congressional districting in order to add political power to the south by bolstering their numbers, Article 4 of the Constitution allowed for the recovery of slaves who had escaped their masters, and the importation of new African slaves would not be banned until 1808. This period in American history produced one of the finest documents in the history of man, but in so doing it also set the stage for the conflicts to come, both political and military. Even with the concessions made by the North, however, many Southerners still disliked many of the impositions on their states made by the new constitution. It took men like Charles Cotesworth Pinckney to convince them that this new deal was better than nothing, saying that “We have obtained a right to recover our slaves in whatever part of America they may take refuge, which is a right we had not before.” Northerners would also harbor negative sentiments against the document, in the 1840s and 50s abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison called the Constitution “a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell” and burned copies of the Constitution in protest.

The Compromise of 1820 & Mr. Polk’s War

After the ratification of the U.S. Constitution and the War of 1812, the nation enjoyed a long period of growth and prosperity often labeled the “era of good feelings.” 10 years before this epoch, the Jefferson administration purchased the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon at clearance prices and sent explorers, trappers, and other adventurous citizens into the unknown to begin westward expansion. A key hub for these pioneers was the city of St. Louis, which quickly became the so-called “gateway to the West.” In 1820, the constitutionally mandated census determined that some 66,586 souls called the Missouri Territory home, and the people there were clamoring for statehood. Many predicted that the admittance of the 24th state into the Union would be routine, but intense debates in Congress stalled the process and led to a Constitutional crisis. This crisis was only alleviated when a compromise was reached. Legislation was passed that would admit Missouri into the Union as a slave state while restricting any state above the 36th parallel from legalizing the practice and by breaking what is now the state of Maine away from Massachusetts and admitting it as a free state. The importance of this period in American history is in the formation of sectarian lines clearly separating the North from the South that would define the next 50 years of American history and cost more than 600,000 men their lives.

Following the accession of Missouri and Maine into the Union, more states were admitted, and the country continued to expand westward. However, westward expansion was not a certainty for the United States, as American pioneers blazed the trail westward, they were met with violent conflict with native tribes and with the government of Mexico. Mexico had only declared its independence from Spain in 1821, and the nascent country sought to strengthen its hold on the northern territories of Texas and Alta California. This would not pan out for Mexico, however, as its northernmost territories were sparsely populated, Texas, for example, had a population of 3,500 Mexican citizens. In an attempt to increase the population of Texas, Mexico rescinded the ban on foreign immigration and allowed English-speaking Americans to enter the territory. Most of the new denizens of Mexico’s wild northern province were from the American south, and so held proslavery sentiments. By 1835, the population of Anglo-Texans dwarfed the number of Mexican Tejanos, and so these Texans sought their independence from Mexico. What ensued was a 6-month war that formed the independent Republic of Texas. Some years later, in 1846, Texas sought accession to the Union and claimed the Rio Grande as the boundary between Texas and Mexico while the Mexicans claimed that the true border should be the Nueces River, some 150 miles north of Texas’ claim.

In the election of 1844, Democrat James K. Polk ran on a platform of hawkish expansion, he promised and would deliver a resolution to the conflict with Mexico over Texas, and the conflict with Britain over the Oregon Territory. His hawkishness on the issue coupled with his desire to see the institution of slavery expanded made war with Mexico inevitable, and on April 25th, 1846 the conflict then-lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant dubbed “Mr. Polk’s War” began. Northern Whigs opposed the war, seeing it as an excuse to create a new slave state and increase the power of the pro-slavery coalition in Congress. Then Congressman Abraham Lincoln was counted among those in opposition to the Mexican War. Though Lincoln and his allies in Congress fought hard for their beliefs, the war was won relatively quickly, though with high casualties on both sides. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended hostilities between the United States and Mexico and set the boundary between the two nations as the Rio Grande River. Additionally, in 1848 Mexico ceded land to the U.S. that today makes up parts of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, free to become free or slave states. The Compromise of 1820 had set the battle lines between North and South in the east of the continent, the Mexican war had allowed for unchecked expansion of slavery into the West.

13,283 Americans died fighting in the Mexican-American War, mostly from disease.

Bleeding Kansas, Harper’s Ferry, and Secession

California was admitted to the Union as a free state in 1850. This admission worried many Southerners that the coalition of free states would soon overpower the slave states in Congress and so a compromise was sought. A series of legislation known collectively as the Compromise of 1850 sought to address this issue through mutual concessions. The South agreed to the admittance of California as a free state but also introduced a new fugitive slave act that would essentially destroy the distinction between free and slave states. This new fugitive slave act required state and local law enforcement in every state of the Union to arrest suspected fugitive slaves and also allowed the government to fine and imprison any person found to have aided escaped slaves. This made northern anti-slavery Whigs and abolitionists feel as though they were now complicit in slavery and in so doing it made conflict between the two camps nearly inevitable. Similar legislation in 1854 introduced by Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas to build a railroad through the new Nebraska territory left it up to the states to decide whether or not to allow slavery. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 so enflamed tensions over slavery that some historians consider it the true start of hostilities in the American Civil War. Pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces clashed on the streets and killed each other in droves. In 1856, an anti-slavery zealot named John Brown killed some 5 pro-slavery advocates in response to the sacking of the anti-slavery hub in the territory, Lawrence, Kansas by pro-slavery forces. This event became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre.

Brown was not content with his actions at Kansas, he wanted to become a key instigator in the downfall of slavery. In this effort, Brown and a gang of his children and some freed slaves attacked the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. Though this attack failed to accomplish its aim of catalyzing a wide-scale slave revolt across the South, it served as the point of no return for the Civil War to begin in earnest. Everyone across the nation had to choose whether or not Brown had been justified in his anger at the system of slavery. This ratcheted up the already sky-high tensions in the country. Before his hanging in 1859, Brown famously argued that he “now [was] quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away, but with Blood. I had… vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed, it might be done.” John Brown would prove prophetic in this regard.

John Brown: a hero to many and to many others a terrorist.

In 1860, a thin and monstrously tall former Congressman named Abraham won the nomination of the nascent Republican party and went on to carry the general election that autumn to win the White House. This proved to be too much for the southern states who felt that Mr. Lincoln’s election would prove to be the final nail in slavery’s coffin, and so they began to tear apart the fabric of the Union during the secession winter of 1860–61. In the preamble to its Confederate Constitution, South Carolina argued that “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery… [and] the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.” In a speech now referred to as the Cornerstone Speech, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens argued that:

The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution of African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted.

Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens argued that the cornerstone of the new Confederacy was what he called the “great truth” that the “negro is not equal to the white man.”

Confederate soldiers themselves argued during the war that their purpose was to defend slavery. As William Nugent of the 28th Mississippi Infantry said in September of 1863 “This country without slave labor would be completely worthless. We can only live and exist by that species of labor: and hence I am willing to fight to the last.” Or in another letter written in November of 1860 by William Grimball of the 1st South Carolina Artillery, “A stand must be made for African Slavery or it is forever lost.”

The causes of grand conflicts are always multivariate in nature. It is certain that many men of the South fought for lofty goals like state pride and unity. They also fought for a sense of manly pride and to feel as though they were protecting their homes. However, as the Confederates themselves argued before their crushing defeat in 1865, slavery was by far and away the most poignant issue that caused the conflict. In arguing that the Civil War was not caused primarily by slavery, then, proponents of the lost cause myth actively disagree with the Confederates they claim to support. Their legal documents, the writings of their leaders, and letters and writings from Confederate soldiers and citizens all show a similar desire to uphold African slavery, and to maintain the rigid caste of the antebellum racial hierarchy. The Southern apologists who wrote much of the history of the war that undergirds the modern “lost cause” interpretation have clouded Americans’ views on the conflict and its bitter, sectarian causes. This revisionism is anti-truth and anti-American, as it seeks to support the largest rebellion in American history, fought to keep some 4 million Americans in bondage, and left more than 360,000 American troops dead.

Stoic Failings and What They Can Teach Us About the Art of Living

Most of the articles and books written about the history of Stoic philosophers focus on their success stories; rightfully so, as there are many of them to tell. We read about the slave made freer than his master through self-discipline, the lone senator who fought against tyranny and who, though defeated, was never conquered, and finally about the philosopher king who led his country through civil strife, foreign wars, and a deadly plague. The Stoic school, like any other philosophical school, was made up of human beings: Men and women with passions, desires, temptations, and fears that they spent their lives trying to tame. What, if anything, can we learn from the examples of Stoic failure? Principally, we can learn humility. For if even these masters of self-control could fail, so too can we. More broadly, we can recount their errors in the hope that they will allow us to see that which was obscured from these Stoics by passion and fear in their own time.

Seneca: The Embers of the Fire that Consumed Rome

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was one of the greatest Stoic philosophers of all time. Even today, 2,000 years after his death, Seneca’s works are popular among those seeking inner peace and self-control. Yet, for all his brilliance, self-mastery, and steadfast ability to endure the great hardships of disease and exile, his political legacy, and indeed his demise, would be defined by his worst student: Nero.

Seneca was an erudite youth. Born far from Rome in the distant backwater of Hispania, his future as a legal and political powerhouse was nonetheless virtually assured as he climbed the ranks of mos maiorum; the stepladder of Roman politics which all aspiring political actors had to climb. However, sometime around 20 AD Seneca would be forced to leave Rome so that his aunt could treat his illness, probably tuberculosis, in Egypt. He would live away from the hustle and bustle of the eternal city for 10 years, while his aunt treated his symptoms, and though he would eventually heal and return to Rome, his illness would harry him for the rest of his life. Sometime after his return to Rome, he would again have to leave, this time for political reasons. The new emperor of Rome, Claudius, was convinced by his wife Messalina that Seneca had committed adultery with a woman named Julia Livilla and he was exiled to the island of Corsica.

While on Corsica, we can see the seeds of Seneca’s greatest failure sprouting: his inability to stand up to vile and corrupt emperors. In the hopes of being recalled from his exile on Corsica, Seneca penned a work entitled Consolation to Polybius, which made several blandishments to the emperor aimed at receiving an official recall to the capital. It worked. In 49 AD, Agrippina, Nero’s mother, asked Claudius to recall Seneca from exile so that he might tutor her son; the emperor approved. Upon his return to Rome, Seneca spent several years tutoring the boy, hoping to make some appreciable impact on the affairs of state through him.

He failed. Seneca tried as best he could to live life on a knife’s edge, balancing his Stoicism which admonished those who sought political power above all else, and his personal-political ambition to serve in positions of immense power. He was, to be entirely fair, not hired to teach the young boy philosophy per se. Seneca was chosen by Agrippina because of his famed oratory prowess, a skill that nearly saw him executed years earlier by emperor Caligula. The ability to make grand speeches would not make Nero a good emperor. If anything, it made the petulant boy-king more effective at forcing his hedonistic will on the people of Rome.

Despite being placed in a difficult situation, Seneca failed in taming the boy, which would have disastrous consequences for Rome. Seneca’s essays written on morality and addressed to the emperor, though well thought-out and powerful in their own right, were hollow platitudes when compared to the strict, no-bullshit message Nero needed. Later Stoics, like Junius Rusticus (who appears in this article for his own failings), would not hesitate to be blunt, even when teaching emperors. This weakness in Seneca would help to breed a killer and a tyrant.

Nero was indeed a monster. He ordered the killing of his own mother, killed his political opponents (including Gaius Rubellius Plautus, a Stoic philosopher and a good man), and plunged the empire into economic ruin. While it is probably not true that Nero played the fiddle as Rome burned, as the popular legend goes, he certainly did not let the great fire of Rome go to waste as an opportunity to show off his depravity. Nero rebuilt much of the destroyed city for his personal use, erecting palaces and statues while Romans went homeless. He also raised taxes on the provinces to pay for the restitution of the city, in stark contrast to Marcus Aurelius who would sell the imperial possessions rather than levy a ruinous tax on his own people.

The tale of Seneca and Nero reminds us of a key Stoic principle: that we must always do what we know to be right, regardless of the consequences. As Marcus Aurelius says in Meditations, the most important thing in life is “just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter. Cold or warm. Tired or well-rested.” Seneca would redeem himself in the end, returning to fully embodying Stoic principles in his retirement and, like Socrates or Thrasea, dying the heroic death of a philosopher dedicated to his principles. It is important to note that none of us can know how we would react if placed in his position. Many of us who judge Seneca would almost certainly have fared much worse with a knife to our throat. However, it is important to learn one key lesson from the failings of this great man: problems only get worse if ignored, and if ignored for too long enough they will consume you whole.

Nero wasn’t in Rome when the city burned in 64 AD, but the popular myth of Nero and his fiddle captures something fundamental about the essence of the man.

Rusticus Executes a Good Man

If you ask a Stoic about Junius Rusticus, he or she will likely know him as a positive figure; a teacher and a good Stoic who served his country and taught Stoicism to perhaps the greatest Stoic who ever lived. If you ask a Christian, however, you will likely be met with a different response. To them, Rusticus represents the same unjust force that beleaguered early Christians, that threw them to the lions and crucified them. It serves as a good example of the principle that even a life lived through virtue can be altered by one single decision.

Rusticus, the grandson of a proud member of the so-called “Stoic resistance” movement, was a good man. He was a soldier, a politician, and a philosopher who served his friends, family, and country. He served first as a soldier, fighting for the glory of Rome, and through merit and skill he worked his way up to becoming a General. Under emperor Hadrian, he would serve as consul of Rome and be appointed by the same as the teacher of the future emperor: Marcus Aurelius.

After Marcus Aurelius became emperor in 161 AD upon his adopted father’s death, Rusticus was appointed to various positions of power in the government. First, he served his second term as consul of Rome, once his term as consul ended, he would serve as Urban Prefect; a position that would define his legacy. As the Stoic author Ryan Holiday puts it in his book, The Lives of the Stoics, the urban prefect was essentially the mayor of Rome. As the urban prefect, Rusticus had complete legal authority within 100 miles of Rome and was charged with the task of maintaining law and order.

The burgeoning Christian sect would prove an effective challenge to Roman authority. It is not so much that the Romans were motivated by religious zeal in their conflict with the Christians; citizens and merchants were wary of them, and politicians feared their loyalty. If, those in power thought, these Christians do not acknowledge any gods but their one “true” God, then they must deny the holy nature of the office of the emperor, and thus are traitors to the state. Years before, emperor Trajan had actually criminalized Christianity on pain of death, though Christians were not actively sought out, they would be killed for not recognizing the Roman pantheon of Gods.

This came to a head in 165 AD when a Cynic named Crescens denounced a man named Justin following a dispute. Justin was dragged before Junius Rusticus to be tried. Justin and Rusticus, under any other circumstances, would have been fast friends. In fact, Justin had been a Stoic earlier in his life, though he left the school to become a Christian. Even if Justin had not been a Stoic, he might have expected lenience and clemency from Rusticus. After all, was Justin not standing up for his principles? Was he not practicing wisdom and courage in standing up to the might of Rome for his cause? Their trial is recorded for us in the Acts of Justin, in which a conversation between the prefect Rusticus and Justin goes like this: “Rusticus the prefect said, let us, then, now come to the matter in hand, and which presses. Having come together, offer sacrifice with one accord to the gods. Justin said, No right-thinking person falls away from piety to impiety. Rusticus the prefect said, unless you obey, you shall be mercilessly punished. Justin said, through prayer we can be saved on account of our Lord Jesus Christ, even when we have been punished, because this shall become to us salvation and confidence at the more fearful and universal judgment-seat of our Lord and Savior.”

Which man sounds more Stoic in this encounter? Rusticus comes across as a despotic torturer killing a man he had the power to slap on the wrist and pass on for no reason. Junius Rusticus ordered Justin to be executed, and within the year he was beheaded. At the time, Rome’s wars and a deadly plague that would ultimately claim the emperor and 5 to 10 million souls across the empire distracted from the trial of Justin Martyr; history would remember the event better than those who lived it. The tale of Rusticus and Justin is a reminder to us to live the Stoic virtue of justice. We need to see situations from other perspectives, and we should be as lenient and charitable as we possibly can be with our fellow man. As Rusticus’ student, Marcus Aurelius would write in Meditations, “I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so, none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.”

Rusticus failed in this task and is now remembered as a monster by millions. Remember to act with justice and kindness, even, perhaps especially, when it is hard to do so.

Christians were often executed for failing to honor the Roman gods, their belief being confused with a refusal to acknowledge the supremacy of the Roman emperor.

“Life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future” — Seneca

Biden’s Billions: The Slow Erosion of the Separation of Powers and the Threat to American Democracy

Although the United States was the first modern nation to transition from a monarchic to a democratic government, hardly any countries have adopted the most distinctive features of our republican system. Few 18th-century advocates for republicanism rushed to copy our electoral college or our federalist system while designing their own republics. However, this has not been the case for one key American founding principle: the separation of powers, which has been widely embraced. Our founding fathers were well-versed in history and enlightenment philosophy and knew the dangers of vesting too much power in any single individual or governmental body. After 7 years of fighting in a bloody war against the crown, the American statesmen tasked with crafting the government of, by, and for the people knew that too much centrally vested power would return the nascent country to an antebellum order of anti-democratic, top-down control. In The Federalist №51, James Madison writes of the separation of powers that “it may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government.” Even in the 18th century, the founding fathers understood the principle that Sir John Acton would famously elucidate in the phrase: “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In the 20th century, however, the separation of powers came under a siege that has yet to subside. A slow erosion of this principle in favor of short-term expediency has left the federal government unable to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

President Joe Biden on August 24th, 2022

War Powers

In 1964, following an attack on U.S. naval forces, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which vested in then President Lyndon B. Johnson nearly limitless power to militarily aid “any member or protocol state” of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). In writing this blank check to the executive branch, Congress effectively removed its exclusive exercise of the rights granted to it by Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution (to declare war, raise and support armies, make rules for the government, regulation of the land and naval forces, etc.). The war in Vietnam would arguably end in an American defeat, and with the deaths of more than 1.3 million people. A defeated America, licking its wounds from the Vietnam conflict and jaded with overseas conflict, demanded structural change. In 1973, Congress headed their calls and passed the War Powers Act, overriding President Nixon’s veto. The intent of the act was to clarify the role of Congress and the role of the president in waging war. This War Powers Act was balanced on a knife’s edge from the beginning. It aimed to allow the president to react swiftly to threats that required more immediate action than Congress could provide, while also maintaining Congress’ constitutional right to declare and oversee America’s wars. Though the effort to preserve the separation of powers was noble, the War Powers Act arguably failed to adequately check the executive branch. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada without congressional approval. Although it sparked an intense backlash among Reagan’s political opponents, the invasion resulted in only minor disputes over military funding. In late 1990, then President George H.W. Bush stationed more than 500,000 U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia in response to Saddam Hussein’s illegal invasion of Kuwait, without Congressional approval. In 1991, Congress further caved to the demands of President Bush to invade Iraq. In this case, Congress passed a blank check, similar to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution though not as sweeping, allowing President Bush to wage war in Iraq with limited congressional oversight. In the mid-1990s, President Bill Clinton arguably violated the spirit of the War Powers Act by sending U.S. troops into Bosnia. Finally, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed several bills allowing for the use of military force in Afghanistan and Iraq, authorized by then President George W. Bush. This lack of oversight by Congress has enmeshed America in several overseas conflicts, resulting in trillions of dollars wasted and the deaths of thousands, while we have arguably failed to achieve many of our foreign policy objectives.

Overreach by the Supreme Court

Article III of the U.S. Constitution created the Supreme Court and vested in it “the judicial power of the United States.” The landmark 1803 Supreme Court case, Marbury v. Madison, gave the court the right of judicial review. These powers were granted to the court so that, when the president acted in his/her capacity as the chief executive or when Congress passed a law, the court could review that action to determine its constitutionality. This role of the court, necessary for the preservation of the separation of powers, has come under attack in the name of political expediency. Today, the court acts less as a check on the executive and legislative branches of government, and more as a de facto legislature. Gay marriage, abortion rights, and the outcome of presidential elections have all had their final say, not in front of an elected legislature, but rather by 9 unelected justices appointed by the president. It is important to note that the opinions here expressed are only relevant insofar as they pertain to the function of government. No argument is being made one way or the other about the viability of gay marriage, the morality of abortion or bans thereof, or regarding the outcome of the election of 2000. When Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973 by the Warren court, it was immediately controversial among constitutional scholars. The penumbra argument made by the court in Roe seemed to some to create a constitutional right to privacy out of whole cloth, and then to necessarily imply a right to an abortion up to a certain point in the development of the fetus, despite no article or amendment in the constitution directly establishing such rights. The language of the decision established the viability standard; that no state could regulate abortion before the point of viability in the third trimester. Disregarding one’s opinion on abortion, the arguments before the court read more like a legislative fact-finding mission, and the decision itself has little to do with the supreme court’s powers to determine the constitutionality of the laws. This disconnect was the basis for the recent Dobbs v. Jackson decision, in which the court struck down Roe v. Wade, and returned the question of abortion to the states or to the federal legislature, as it always should have been. If one is pro-choice, would it be preferable to have a woman’s right to choose always contingent on the whim of 9 unelected justices, or should it be a question of legislation? If one is pro-life, would it be preferable for the state to commit what is viewed by pro-lifers as state-sanctioned murder because of 9 unelected justices, or would one prefer their elected officials to oversee the legislative process, and create laws that address abortion directly? All of our peers in the west have actual laws regulating abortion, rather than sweeping judicial precedent; we should emulate this. It is important to note that this critique of the Supreme Court only applies insofar as the decisions made therein violate the Constitutional purpose of the court, as outlined in Article III of the Constitution. The court has repeatedly made decisions that positively affect marginalized communities in the United States, such as in Brown v. Board of Education, where the segregationist principle of “separate but equal” established in the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson was struck down. The difference between the decision in Brown and the decision in Roe is that Brown struck down segregation based on principles of the Constitution, namely the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, while Roe could cite no such explicit Constitutional principle. When the judiciary begins to act as a legislature, a carefully crafted tripartite system, designed to combat man’s proclivity to be corrupted absolutely by absolute power quickly breaks down into a de facto elected monarchy, or perhaps an oligarchy. The president signs executive orders, appoints justices to the supreme court, and wages war with little or no oversight by Congress, which is supposed to be the central branch of our democracy. This paradigm vests far too much power in a single person and creates an opening for a radical leader to radically lurch the policy agenda of the United States with little standing in their way. President Donald Trump showed the rotting system of checks and balances for what it was by repeatedly breaking with tradition and established legal precedent with no consequences.

Biden’s Plan to Bail Out Students

The most recent example of the erosion of the separation of powers is President Joe Biden’s plan to spend $400 billion without permission from Congress, in order to bail out those with student loan debt. Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress “the power of the purse” or the ability to spend public funds collected through taxation of the citizens. There is a limited amount of money that the executive branch is entitled to spend on various causes, though a plan with a $400 billion price tag, sanctioned entirely under the auspices of the president, grossly violates mos maiorum and established precedent. Spending of that magnitude ought to be handled by the legislature to better reflect the will of the people. All of the aforementioned issues would have been handled better were Congress in charge of their execution, as mandated by the Constitution. Declarations of war, issues with cultural salience like abortion and gay marriage, and large-scale spending are issues about which there ought to be vigorous debate, but ultimately insofar as the law is concerned, these issues should be decided by the body that the people have the most regular control over; Congress. Spending without adequate checks on that spending is a problem in and of itself, however, it does act as a canary in a coal mine for more structural problems in the government which highlight the threat posed to the separation of powers to American democracy. What if, instead of a political moderate like Joe Biden, some radical politician was elected to the presidency? This person, without adequate checks on their power, could stack the Supreme Court with loyalists, issuing de facto legislation by fiat that would affect hundreds of millions. The president could spend billions or even trillions of dollars without the necessary oversight that Congress can provide. Finally, and perhaps scariest of all, the president can declare wars, throwing the full might of the American armed forces into whatever country he/she may desire without the consent of the people. Biden’s proposed plan to bail out student loan debt may be something that seems disconnected from the broader erosion of our institutions, however, that could not be farther from the truth. This level of spending from the executive is unprecedented in our history, and will only contribute to our rising national debt. Our founders understood the value of the separation of powers; we ought to learn this lesson.

Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

How Stoics Remain Loyal to Their Principles in Polarized Times

The political landscape in the West has become increasingly polarized in recent years. Extremist activists, commentators, and governments portray a political landscape that many do not experience in their daily lives; one of intense division and rancor. Nowhere in the developed world is this trend made more lucid than in the United States where, according to a study from Pew Research, both sides of the political spectrum are becoming deeper enmeshed in their ideological convictions. The researchers at Pew wanted to compare political data collected from the early 1990s to that collected in the 2010s; their results were interesting. According to the results, “Today, 92% of Republicans are to the right of the median (middle) Democrat, compared with 64% twenty years ago. And 94% of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican, up from 70% in 1994.” This split means less communication, less dialogue, and less common ground.

Less communication leads to a positive feedback loop wherein people make a caricature of their opponent’s positions and believe them to be maliciously motivated. This effect only adds to the tribalism that defines the “culture war” era of American politics. This challenge is nothing to despair at, however. As the Roman poet Ovid said, “Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.” Ovid is right. Tough times are challenging, but the alternative to standing against the maladies that plague our political discourse is to cower and acquiesce to them. This is an unacceptable alternative. This essay will explicate Stoic texts for their wisdom and examine how adherence to one’s principles in difficult times is the only way to restore a healthy public discourse.

The first principle is flexibility, not in one’s principles, but in the battles one chooses. In the opening book of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, Marcus lists his various debts and lessons from those who have most influenced him. Of his philosophy teacher, Apollonius of Chalcedon, Marcus is grateful for the lesson that “a man can show both strength and flexibility.” This passage came to mind recently when I was walking outside during a heavy wind. I noticed the leaves rustling in the tree’s canopies and the branches swaying violently in the howling gale. This scene, when viewed through the lens of Marcus’ gratitude toward Apollonius, suggested a metaphor to me; that strength is like a tree in a storm; flexing its extremities to suit the situation but keeping its trunk and roots secure and unmoving. We do not need to run headfirst into every fight, nor do we need to cower and sacrifice our principles in the name of comfort. Temperance, that most subtle of Stoic virtues, is required here. As Aristotle says in his Nicomachean Ethics, “Temperance and courage, then, are destroyed by excess and defect, and preserved by the mean.” Remaining rigid and unmoving will break you when strong winds blow. Running blindly into every battle is not courageous, it is rash and foolhardy. So, in the modern political landscape, one must stick to the principles one has adopted, but one must also remember not to stumble into every trap along the way; you have more useful things to do with your time than that.

Practically, flexibility means remaining confident in your positions, but not so overly stiff that you become brittle and breakable. When, for example, a friend or peer is discussing some political issue with you, it is not necessary to intervene aggressively in defense of your position. Allow some leniency and let perceived slights pass. If, though, you are challenged directly on some political point, defend yourself in a respectful and thoughtful manner: let your leaves rustle in the breeze but keep your roots buried deep and unmoving.

The second principle is loyalty; remembering what we should revere and what we should not. One should never feel a sense of loyalty to a particular ideology, especially to the point of accepting willful blindness in its name. Today, it is all too common for people to form a tribal attachment to their political party, going as far as ignoring the truth to protect their insecure but firmly held beliefs. This is how so-called “echo chambers” are formed, by otherwise rational actors electing to ignore their better angels for the hollow comfort of ideology. This is not the path to a healthy political or social fabric; this is the path to tribal chaos and ruin. As President Abraham Lincoln said of America, “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” Foreign armies have not harried America’s cities since the War of 1812 when our nation was much smaller and weaker. The times when we have come closest to destruction were when we chose hate over love, discord over order, and callousness over empathy. Only Americans can destroy America, that is why getting this right is important.

So if not ideology, what should we be loyal to? Again, Marcus Aurelius answers that question beautifully in Meditations, this time in Book 4. “Two kinds of readiness are constantly needed” he says, “(I) to do only what the logos (reason) of authority and law directs, with the good of human beings in mind; (II) to reconsider your position, when someone can set you straight or convert you to his. But your conversion should always rest on a conviction that it's right or benefits others — nothing else — not because it's more appealing or popular.” Our loyalties, in the Stoic view, should lie with reason alone, but not reason of the cold and utilitarian sort, reason oriented toward the good of our fellow man. In this way, the second principle is related to the first; it is imperative to remain flexible when presented with a new idea. Do not hold on to your preconceptions out of some loyalty to an ideology that does not merit such treatment. Examine your ideas harshly and remember to constantly ask yourself whether or not your worldview comports with reality. “Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself” as Marcus says. Doing this will allow you to speak in the face of adversity from political “opponents” because you will have nothing to fear; if the new idea is faulty, explain why it is so and if you cannot offer a rebuttal to the new idea, examine your beliefs and change. This will allow us to live honestly and forthrightly.

In the real world, this looks like standing up for your beliefs, even when you know you will be shouted down. If, for example, someone is yelling at you because you believe that the 2020 election was free and fair, and they do not, unless they provide sufficient evidence to shift your position, then stay the course. If you find that someone on the political left smears you with some epithet, calling you phobic of something you know yourself not to fear; let that roll off you like rainwater off an umbrella. So long as you examine your positions deeply and critically, you have nothing to fear from making those positions known, and then standing by them in the heat of an argument.

Marcus Porcius Cato the Younger

Many of the most famous Stoics lived hard lives. Marcus Aurelius spent his adult life away from home, lost his father as a young child, lost his wife Faustina while suppressing a rebellion, and ultimately lost nine of his children. Seneca was chronically ill and was repeatedly exiled from Rome. Epictetus was born into the brutal system of Mediterranean slavery that would break his limbs, but not his spirit. These maladies struck when and where they did because of fate. Cato the Younger, on the other hand, was dealt a comfortable hand by fate. He was born into a rich and storied Roman family with political connections and plentiful resources. Cato chose the difficult path and chose to stand by his principles, but not in a way that was rash or ineffective. A famous story about Cato as a young boy tells us that he visited a man named Sulla, a Dictator who forcibly seized power and prescribed “hit lists” of his political rivals to be killed and stripped of their land and titles. Cato asked why this man was so important, and why so many felt the need to offer favors to him. He was told that, rather than being loved, it was because Romans feared Sulla’s power. To this, Cato supposedly said, “Why then didn’t you give me a sword so I could free my country from slavery?”

Cato earnestly and forthrightly climbed his way through the rungs of mos maiorum, the obligatory step-latter of Roman political life. He abstained from a vice that was all too common in his time: bribery. Cato simply felt that saying and doing the right thing would be enough to win him the necessary votes. The Greek historian Plutarch says of Cato that “the harshness of his sentiments, and the mingling of his character with them, gave their austerity a smiling graciousness that won men’s hearts.” At thirty, Cato was elected to the position of quaestor and thus was granted access to the senate, a body from which he would deliver his most cutting speeches against the degradation of the republic he loved. He gave speeches denouncing the triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus and denounced Caesar’s campaign in Gaul as an elongated war crime (as the opening scene of HBO’s Rome depicts). He never compromised where it mattered, but he was willing to work within the bounds of the system and alongside those with whom he disagreed to achieve his ends. As Ryan Holiday records in his book Lives of the Stoics, “It would be a mistake, however, to think that Cato was incapable of compromise or collaboration…within him there was an equal blend…of severity and kindness, of caution and bravery, of solicitude for others and fearlessness for themselves, of the careful avoidance of baseness and, in like degree, the eager pursuit of justice.”

Cato would ultimately fail to beat his political opponents, namely Gaius Julius Caesar. Caesar took over as dictator in Rome, defeated Pompey, and killed the republic which Cato spent his last and greatest measure of devotion in defense of. Cato, however, was never conquered by Caesar. He may have been unable to accomplish his goals, but he was never truly beaten. Instead, though offered amnesty by a victorious tyrant, Cato chose to take his own life. As the great Stoic philosopher Seneca said of Cato,

“In an age when the old credulity had long been thrown aside, and knowledge had by time attained its highest development, Cato came into conflict with ambition, a monster of many shapes, with the boundless greed for power which the division of the whole world among three men could not satisfy. He stood against the vices of a degenerate state that was sinking to destruction beneath its very weight, and he stayed the fall of the republic to the utmost that one man’s hand could do to draw it back.”

In that way, Cato was the victor, for he lived according to his principles and left the rest to fate.

Cato’s final day was like many others in his life. He ate a full meal, laughed, talked philosophy with friends and family, and then fell on his sword. Gone but never conquered.

Cato’s example should inspire us all to consider our positions deeply and, once done, to speak honestly and without restraint. Today, there are few violent battles between political opponents and there are even fewer politically motivated killings. Yet paradoxically it seems that we are more afraid than ever to speak our thoughts openly. What are we afraid of? Something so empty as the jeers of the utopian naysayers and those who do not know good from evil? Why should we allow them to dictate terms to us? This is the cardinal political problem of the so-called “culture war” era, perhaps best summed up by Dr. Jordan Peterson who said, “If you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.” So, live your life honestly and with reason aimed at the maximal human good. Do not fear speaking your mind, instead accept that you will encounter sneers and jeers from those who do not know all that you do. Listen to them and if they are then right adopt their position, however, if they are wrong then stand by your principles or die doing so. The light of the Roman Republic was extinguished by a series of weak men refusing to say what needed to be said for so long that even one man of an iron constitution could not right their collective wrongs. America will be no different. Let us not repeat this calamitous error.

“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future” — John F. Kennedy